MovieChat Forums > I, Claudius (1977) Discussion > Is the board game in episode 2(?) histor...

Is the board game in episode 2(?) historically accurate?

posted 9 years ago by Elmorado
7 replies | jump to latest

Basically what the headline says.
The board game Augustus plays with the young boys (Lucius and Gaius?)
was it historical or just a funny and a neat trick to show how sometimes their past times may have been not so different from ours even though there is 2000 years between us, or some such? I know different games have been around forever, but that which appeared to be a Roman version of Risk or something made me wonder...

[–] CheruthCutestory 9 years ago

There have been a great many game boards that seem quite complicated found on archeological sites from Ancient Rome from all over the empire and through out the history of it.

However, we don't have any existing instruction manuals or anything. So, we don't know exactly how the games were played or the rules.

I'm glad to see the endgame of feminism is women dressing up like Dennis the Menace at work.

[–] nlfan-1 9 years ago

I was wondering what exactly that game was too as I never thought the Romans played board games. Then I figured they were just playing Romanopoly.😁

[–] ErlandGadde 9 years ago

Augustus calls the game "Empire". It seems to have a similar goal as Risk, but there are differences. The players throw the dice and walk along like Monopoly or Ludo, which you don't Risk.

And another peculiar thing I noticed when I just checked the episode: The players go conterclockwise! First Gaius, then Lucius, then Augustus (that's when they are interrupted by Drusus's arrival). But in most games today, whether board games or card games, the players go clockwise. Wasn't it so in the Antiquity too? Then why do they do it counterclockwise here?

[–] schfooge 8 years ago

In the 1500s, there arose some superstitions regarding counter-clockwise movement. It was referred to as "widdershins". It is considered unlucky, and in literature, it has been associated with magic, the supernatural, or even the demonic.

The superstition generally has died out, but lives on in the fact that board games and almost anything else that moves in a circle is usually designed to move clockwise instead of the other way.

[–] crlnrgbrght5 9 years ago

It must have been a popular game at that time, because, it was played in the "Ten Commandments". And, I even knew the name of it at one time, but, I can't think of it without looking it up.

[–] joekill162 8 years ago

I think it's was just their version of Risk and monopoly and it had to be built from scratch, to the point that only the roman 1% elite could afford such a game, that's probably why we never herd of it, but what I do find strange, that more versions of this game was not use and shared among high ranking military generals all over the empire, and that a game like that was not written about and save in the roman military archive.

[–] me-1523 8 years ago

I think it's just a plot device to show how Augustus is grooming the boys for future rule, and at the same time it serves as en expo dump for the audience on just how big the Roman Empire is at the time and how difficult it is to manage it, both from external and internal threats.

In other words: The game's not important. What's important is the relationship between the characters playing it. Augustus never played the game with Tiberius or Drusus (although he probably did with Marcellus).